It can probably be said that there are as many possible causes of commitment phobia as there are people suffering from it.

That's because each of us have different experiences as we grow up, no two children ever experience the same childhood, no two teenagers feel the same feelings when going through puberty and adolescence, and no two adults are the same.

Having said that, as a therapist who helps people with commitment phobia all the time, it must be noted that there are often 'common' themes.

For example... people with commitment phobia in adulthood, have often experienced one or more of the following experiences in their earlier years.

A significant loss or bereavement
A childhood trauma
Parental separation (such as a divorce)
Unpleasant step-parents
Poor role models
Another common cause of commitment phobia amongst those who have sought therapy for their commitment issues, is abuse of one form or another during the formative, childhood years.

Fear or Phobia?

Whenever dealing with any kind of phobia, we've got to understand why a phobia is there, and how it differs from a fear.

Put simply, a fear is the mind's attempt to perform an action to protect us from something.

So, for example, if you open your front door and there's a lion standing there looking at you, you would (understandably!), feel fear! - You might panic, sweat, and want to run away (or at least close the door!)

It's a level of fear that is understandable (proportionate to the threat).

A phobia is similar to a fear in that the mind perceives there to be a threat. The difference is, that in a phobia, the level of anxiety felt is 'disproportionate' to the actual threat.

Overprotection

So lets take the example of someone who, as a child, was badly hurt by a loved one. Their mind unconsciously 'knows'' about it (even though, if asked, they might know nothing about it).

Unconsciously, their mind 'knows' about it... it knows that during childhood, they let someone get close to them, and that person let them down, betrayed their trust, and hurt them.

So it puts into place all sorts of defense mechanisms to stop a similar thing ever happening again.

Keeping people at a distance, 'protects' the person from a similar thing ever happening again.

As mentioned earlier, there are many different possible causes of commitment phobia. Therapies such as hypnoanalysis, for example, seek to find, and resolve the root cause of the phobia for that person.

Before something like hypnoanalysis has taken place, we can never say with any great certainty what caused commitment phobia in any one person, but, when taking people with commitment phobia through a therapy like hypnoanalysis, similarities do emerge.